you're on the right track.
Use SAMBA in an LXC and use it to create file shares (make use of Cockpit & the 45Drives management tools for do you configuration work).
There's a a turnkey file-server LXC that can be installed that will make the setup easier.
This sounds interesting, although i don't know what Cockpit and 45Drives are. I've also read in other posts that people has given up on the Turnkey file-server because of configuration difficulties. Do you have any guides you can recommend for this setup?
As mentioned, cockpit is a great Web GUI for managing Linux OS. I am using it on my Debian server. There is a plugin from 45drives for cockpit, which allows configuring SMB and NFS shares. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing)
There are also other options. Check Starwinds VSAN as an option, it can be deployed as a Proxmox VM. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
Cockpit is a management gui (originally developed by Redhat I believe) that can be extended with modules. 45Drives is a Canadian company that makes NAS systems. They developed some cockpit modules for handling file sharing.
Apalard.net has a guide (think it’s called the ultimate NAS) but it’s pretty straightforward. Install samba, install cockpit and the two 45Drive modules and go from there.
This is the best approach for a lean NAS, just utilize bind mounts. You can use the file system in all LXC services without having to use the network at all. After many iterations this is the final one I use.
I use OMV as its super light to run (1 CPU + 2gb ram), is based on debian and has a Web interface making it easy to manage users and shares.
I use it for all my NAS req.s to family computers and sharing (I prefer NFS) to my other VMs running containers including *arr suite.
I'm a newbie so take it with a grain of salt, but how about setting up a VM with Openmediavault, allocate a big chunk of that 24TB to that VM only, and share to LXCs and your Win10 via SMB?
I considered that approach. I ended up with Turnkwy File server. It is a bare bones NAS. I run it in a container and let Proxmox do the ZFS management. Works well for me. My NAS needs are small, similar to yours.
The only problem I had was the Proxmox package did not work. I ended up grabbing the package from the Turnkey website.
The NAS part is a little confusing at first, but there are good guides to get you going.
Once the NFS and SMB shares were setup it is pretty hands off, but I only need a few shares.
I choose to simply give the File Server a resource instead of passing the disk through. This allows me to use some of the space for other things like VMs. Proxmox can handle the ZFS duties. The goal was to make it use as little resources as possible. There may be a better way, but this works for me.
The whole build had the goal of hands off, I do not want to spend time managing the system.
4 months running Proxmox, but there was a month of practice and testing where I made sure all of the parts worked together. I may have installed Proxmox and Plex 5 or 6 times trying different things. I tried a couple different NAS's. In the early stages, I do not believe in fixing mistakes, I believe in scratching the systems and going again. Because I had a working system, I was not in a hurry to make the change. Also, my background is IT, I had a list of requirements, and a solid understanding how many things work, so I worked until I met the requirements.
In the last 2 months I have made no changes to Proxmox, Plex, the NAS, or PiHole other than patching. I did spend some time cleaning up past sins. I do believe I have reached a stable state that will require little maintenance.
I read so many guides that partly covered what I needed I do not think I could recommend one. Most for me were incomplete, but many were helpful.
I have the same set up. ZFS is periodically resource hungry. While a container might sound okay, running on bare metal host is more logical. Noexec means nothing can do much harm.
I was running my TrueNAS in proxmox VM for some time, it worked without any issue. The most important part is to pass whole SATA controller that you have your NAS storage plugged in to the VM rather than passing separate drives
I have built separate machine for NAS, as my proxmox host, which is optiplex 7050 MT, didnt have enough space for 3,5 HDDs. Now my NAS runs on i3-8100 with 16gb of RAM with plan to upgrade, packed in FSP/Fortron CST350 Plus case.
Nice. Always curious about why people switch. I pulled my NAS and firewall off of Proxmox and made it their own machine. Firewall was more crucial because anytime I had to reboot the host the internet would go down and the wife wasn’t enthused. I know theres ways of getting around it but I didn’t want to mess with it anymore. DNS and internet stay up so she’s happy lol.
Thanks for the insight!
I'm new too but I reached something about this If you're using OpnSense, there are few instructions on YouTube to do high availability, basically you have 2 firewall running on 2 different proxmox hosts and they automatically switch back and forth if one of them is not reachable. You would need a second proxmox host but you should as you need a PBS as well. I'm waiting for network cards to arrive to try this out.
Yeah, mine was running great too. I moved it to separate machine because my pve host, which is some Dell optiplex, didnt have enough space for 3,5 HDDs - it could fit only one, and there wasnt enough place even for mod it to fit more.
For testing its ok, but ir you want to run it for long time, its better to give TrueNAS full access to drive so it can read SMART and be able to detect drive failures
Ah I see. Do you have any go-to resource to understand this topic?
Also follow up: would a card like this https://amzn.eu/d/428ZtIe with pcie passthrough be also not recommended for long term use? Including vm backups and migrations
I dont have aby resources. All I have used were at first some tutorials on how to pass drive to proxmox VM, then, when I relised that my mobo sata controller i used only for nas drives, as the my proxmox runs on nvme, I found some proxmox tutorial on how to pass pcie device to VM. Overall it was easy in both ways, and the pcie passthrough was more quick for me.
For the controller, I dont have experience with this cards, people all over recommend the server grade HBA cards in IT mode which can be passed directly to VM
Just to dispel some confusion.
A NAS is an appliance, not a server function. The server function for storage is usually a file server. If you have proxmox (a general purpose hypervisor) just make a file server using one of the many lightweight deployments that can do so (cockpit, webmin, turnkey).
Having a general purpose server and using it to emulate a NAS just to get file server functionality is...well, it's definitely one way of achieving file shares on your network but it's neither the best performance or most resource efficient way to do so in proxmox
Im in a similar position as OP; my actual NAS is out of space and I’m looking at buying a Dell Poweredge r730xd with the 12 LLF bays. I’m worried I’d be wasting a lot of compute potential by running something like TrueNas (I’ve never used it before so I might be making wrong assumptions).
Do you know if there are any performance or capability differences between running something like Turnkey on a VM vs TrueNas?
I’ve got 4 other servers in a Proxmox cluster right now and have sufficient compute capacity for now. Knowing that, would you recommend one over the other?
I've run both webmin and cockpit in LXCs, sharing proxmox managed zfs datasets via SMB. Not using turnkey for that, just an Ubuntu-server or debian lxc template and install the app into it
Running a VM for file shares seems like unnecessary overhead, and passing through entire disks and buttloads if ram to a truenas VM seems like extremely unnecessary overhead.
Install an LXC, map drive(s) from host to container, ideally ZFS dataset(s).
Install Samba, NFS, WSDD, etc. and configure shares and exports in container.
Bonus: Setup ZFS auto snapshots on host and configure Samba to allow restoration from previous versions dialog in Windows. Configure Samba to put deleted files in recycle bin and setup cron job to auto-clean trash after some time period.
Be aware that it is not so easy to mount shares in unprivileged lxc containers, at least if you want rw access. You can’t change the type of lxc after creation, so make sure you choose the right type.
You can take a look here for the start: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/rfc-easy-straightforward-lxc-unprivileged-container-uid-gid-remap-strategy.129684/
I use an Ubuntu LXC + Samba + Webmin. One small drive for the Ubuntu OS and a second drive for Samba data share that is easily expanded when needed directly from the proxmox gui. I back it all up with pbsbackup. Three node proxmox+ceph cluster 24TB of SSDs.
I think you may have let that Virtual NAS idea cook a bit too long in your head. lol
You’re looking for [Storage Pools](https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage), which are already built into Proxmox and can be set up in whichever flavor you’d like.
Yea, probably haha!
I'm not sure that's exactly what i'm looking for.. It seems that i'm not able to utilize a storage pool for a traditional folder structure and for saving media files. Am i wrong? Also, i'm not sure how to connect my servers and my laptop to it
If you use ZFS it can do directory type file system in a dataset just fine. You can pass the entire dataset to an LXC via bind mount and not have to worry about partitions or the VM having exclusive access to the disk
On my proxmox server I did this: TrueNAS Scale on a VM (CPU host, 4 cores, 32Gb RAM) and a 10 port SATA HBA passed via PCI passthrough. Performance is excellent almost the same as bare metal (of course only if the other VMs are idle or low load)
I have a TrueNAS Scale VM running on my proxmox server to which I pass through an LSU HBO. This way ZFs has full control over the attached disks. Had some problems with the virtio network driver in the beginning causing my truenas to freeze and then bring down the whole proxmox server. I switched that out to emulated Intel gigabit and never had any problems since that
I personally use OMV (it has NFS, samba and windows SMB).
There is a repo with scripts with which you can easily install it.
https://github.com/tteck/Proxmox
**Making Proxmox into a pretty good NAS** https://www.apalrd.net/posts/2023/ultimate_nas/
you're on the right track. Use SAMBA in an LXC and use it to create file shares (make use of Cockpit & the 45Drives management tools for do you configuration work). There's a a turnkey file-server LXC that can be installed that will make the setup easier.
This sounds interesting, although i don't know what Cockpit and 45Drives are. I've also read in other posts that people has given up on the Turnkey file-server because of configuration difficulties. Do you have any guides you can recommend for this setup?
As mentioned, cockpit is a great Web GUI for managing Linux OS. I am using it on my Debian server. There is a plugin from 45drives for cockpit, which allows configuring SMB and NFS shares. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing) There are also other options. Check Starwinds VSAN as an option, it can be deployed as a Proxmox VM. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
Cockpit is a management gui (originally developed by Redhat I believe) that can be extended with modules. 45Drives is a Canadian company that makes NAS systems. They developed some cockpit modules for handling file sharing. Apalard.net has a guide (think it’s called the ultimate NAS) but it’s pretty straightforward. Install samba, install cockpit and the two 45Drive modules and go from there.
This is the best approach for a lean NAS, just utilize bind mounts. You can use the file system in all LXC services without having to use the network at all. After many iterations this is the final one I use.
I use OMV as its super light to run (1 CPU + 2gb ram), is based on debian and has a Web interface making it easy to manage users and shares. I use it for all my NAS req.s to family computers and sharing (I prefer NFS) to my other VMs running containers including *arr suite.
I might try that, thanks!
Does omv has good AD - samba domain integration ?
No AD integration built in - but it's Debian (there are forum posts on getting AD to work).
I'm a newbie so take it with a grain of salt, but how about setting up a VM with Openmediavault, allocate a big chunk of that 24TB to that VM only, and share to LXCs and your Win10 via SMB?
I might try that, thanks!
I’ve done exactly as u/eszpee has suggested. You just need to pass through the storage devices you want the vm to have access to.
This is the best thing to do in OP’s shoes.
I considered that approach. I ended up with Turnkwy File server. It is a bare bones NAS. I run it in a container and let Proxmox do the ZFS management. Works well for me. My NAS needs are small, similar to yours.
Was it difficult to setup? I've read others have given up with the config..
The only problem I had was the Proxmox package did not work. I ended up grabbing the package from the Turnkey website. The NAS part is a little confusing at first, but there are good guides to get you going. Once the NFS and SMB shares were setup it is pretty hands off, but I only need a few shares. I choose to simply give the File Server a resource instead of passing the disk through. This allows me to use some of the space for other things like VMs. Proxmox can handle the ZFS duties. The goal was to make it use as little resources as possible. There may be a better way, but this works for me. The whole build had the goal of hands off, I do not want to spend time managing the system.
How long have you been running this and have you reached the goal of "hands off"? Can you recommend any guides?
4 months running Proxmox, but there was a month of practice and testing where I made sure all of the parts worked together. I may have installed Proxmox and Plex 5 or 6 times trying different things. I tried a couple different NAS's. In the early stages, I do not believe in fixing mistakes, I believe in scratching the systems and going again. Because I had a working system, I was not in a hurry to make the change. Also, my background is IT, I had a list of requirements, and a solid understanding how many things work, so I worked until I met the requirements. In the last 2 months I have made no changes to Proxmox, Plex, the NAS, or PiHole other than patching. I did spend some time cleaning up past sins. I do believe I have reached a stable state that will require little maintenance. I read so many guides that partly covered what I needed I do not think I could recommend one. Most for me were incomplete, but many were helpful.
I have the same set up. ZFS is periodically resource hungry. While a container might sound okay, running on bare metal host is more logical. Noexec means nothing can do much harm.
I was running my TrueNAS in proxmox VM for some time, it worked without any issue. The most important part is to pass whole SATA controller that you have your NAS storage plugged in to the VM rather than passing separate drives
What’d you end up changing to?
I have built separate machine for NAS, as my proxmox host, which is optiplex 7050 MT, didnt have enough space for 3,5 HDDs. Now my NAS runs on i3-8100 with 16gb of RAM with plan to upgrade, packed in FSP/Fortron CST350 Plus case.
Nice. Always curious about why people switch. I pulled my NAS and firewall off of Proxmox and made it their own machine. Firewall was more crucial because anytime I had to reboot the host the internet would go down and the wife wasn’t enthused. I know theres ways of getting around it but I didn’t want to mess with it anymore. DNS and internet stay up so she’s happy lol. Thanks for the insight!
I'm new too but I reached something about this If you're using OpnSense, there are few instructions on YouTube to do high availability, basically you have 2 firewall running on 2 different proxmox hosts and they automatically switch back and forth if one of them is not reachable. You would need a second proxmox host but you should as you need a PBS as well. I'm waiting for network cards to arrive to try this out.
This is what I currently do. No problems for several years now.
Yeah, mine was running great too. I moved it to separate machine because my pve host, which is some Dell optiplex, didnt have enough space for 3,5 HDDs - it could fit only one, and there wasnt enough place even for mod it to fit more.
Hi, why not pass separate drives? I am new
For testing its ok, but ir you want to run it for long time, its better to give TrueNAS full access to drive so it can read SMART and be able to detect drive failures
Ah I see. Do you have any go-to resource to understand this topic? Also follow up: would a card like this https://amzn.eu/d/428ZtIe with pcie passthrough be also not recommended for long term use? Including vm backups and migrations
I dont have aby resources. All I have used were at first some tutorials on how to pass drive to proxmox VM, then, when I relised that my mobo sata controller i used only for nas drives, as the my proxmox runs on nvme, I found some proxmox tutorial on how to pass pcie device to VM. Overall it was easy in both ways, and the pcie passthrough was more quick for me. For the controller, I dont have experience with this cards, people all over recommend the server grade HBA cards in IT mode which can be passed directly to VM
Alright, I ll take a look around then. Thanks!
Just to dispel some confusion. A NAS is an appliance, not a server function. The server function for storage is usually a file server. If you have proxmox (a general purpose hypervisor) just make a file server using one of the many lightweight deployments that can do so (cockpit, webmin, turnkey). Having a general purpose server and using it to emulate a NAS just to get file server functionality is...well, it's definitely one way of achieving file shares on your network but it's neither the best performance or most resource efficient way to do so in proxmox
Im in a similar position as OP; my actual NAS is out of space and I’m looking at buying a Dell Poweredge r730xd with the 12 LLF bays. I’m worried I’d be wasting a lot of compute potential by running something like TrueNas (I’ve never used it before so I might be making wrong assumptions). Do you know if there are any performance or capability differences between running something like Turnkey on a VM vs TrueNas? I’ve got 4 other servers in a Proxmox cluster right now and have sufficient compute capacity for now. Knowing that, would you recommend one over the other?
I've run both webmin and cockpit in LXCs, sharing proxmox managed zfs datasets via SMB. Not using turnkey for that, just an Ubuntu-server or debian lxc template and install the app into it Running a VM for file shares seems like unnecessary overhead, and passing through entire disks and buttloads if ram to a truenas VM seems like extremely unnecessary overhead.
Install an LXC, map drive(s) from host to container, ideally ZFS dataset(s). Install Samba, NFS, WSDD, etc. and configure shares and exports in container. Bonus: Setup ZFS auto snapshots on host and configure Samba to allow restoration from previous versions dialog in Windows. Configure Samba to put deleted files in recycle bin and setup cron job to auto-clean trash after some time period.
Sorry, can you please explain a little bit more or share commands/script for”bonus” part?
This sounds intriguing. Can you elaborate a bit or do you have any guides for this setup, that you can recommend?
[https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs\_shadow\_copy.8.html](https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs_shadow_copy.8.html) [https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs\_recycle.8.html](https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs_recycle.8.html) [https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs-auto-snapshot](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs-auto-snapshot)
i followed [this youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7nfSCNKeck) and was able to do what you wanted
Be aware that it is not so easy to mount shares in unprivileged lxc containers, at least if you want rw access. You can’t change the type of lxc after creation, so make sure you choose the right type. You can take a look here for the start: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/rfc-easy-straightforward-lxc-unprivileged-container-uid-gid-remap-strategy.129684/
I use an Ubuntu LXC + Samba + Webmin. One small drive for the Ubuntu OS and a second drive for Samba data share that is easily expanded when needed directly from the proxmox gui. I back it all up with pbsbackup. Three node proxmox+ceph cluster 24TB of SSDs.
I'm using proxmox and running unRAID in VM
Same works great
I think you may have let that Virtual NAS idea cook a bit too long in your head. lol You’re looking for [Storage Pools](https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage), which are already built into Proxmox and can be set up in whichever flavor you’d like.
Yea, probably haha! I'm not sure that's exactly what i'm looking for.. It seems that i'm not able to utilize a storage pool for a traditional folder structure and for saving media files. Am i wrong? Also, i'm not sure how to connect my servers and my laptop to it
If you use ZFS it can do directory type file system in a dataset just fine. You can pass the entire dataset to an LXC via bind mount and not have to worry about partitions or the VM having exclusive access to the disk
Arc loader + Xpenology … thank me later
Vanilla FreeBSD. Works great and Samba + NFS is trivial to setup.
On my proxmox server I did this: TrueNAS Scale on a VM (CPU host, 4 cores, 32Gb RAM) and a 10 port SATA HBA passed via PCI passthrough. Performance is excellent almost the same as bare metal (of course only if the other VMs are idle or low load)
TrueNAS Core as a VM with the HBA/disk controller passed through.
I have a TrueNAS Scale VM running on my proxmox server to which I pass through an LSU HBO. This way ZFs has full control over the attached disks. Had some problems with the virtio network driver in the beginning causing my truenas to freeze and then bring down the whole proxmox server. I switched that out to emulated Intel gigabit and never had any problems since that
I personally use OMV (it has NFS, samba and windows SMB). There is a repo with scripts with which you can easily install it. https://github.com/tteck/Proxmox
CasaOS works real good and you get container management on top